Posted on April 15, 2012, in Episodes and tagged anime, beat-em-up, elsword. Bookmark the permalink. 45 Comments.
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Friends of the Show
MMO Grinder 
Yeah… I remember this game. I actually did an experimental battle journal, both on my feelings out of game and what I did in-game. Most posts however left me with the exact same feeling, and thus had a lot of the same in it: Just how much the game’s stamina system drained any fun I was having right out of me. I quit around level 32 or 34. I also quit because of the moronic move on costumes… but yeah, it was mostly the stamina system. I could never forgive them for it.
Yes yes, I know about the weekends thing. It’s too late though. They lost my business, lost my money, and instead I ended up dumping $30 into the pocket of Hi-Rez for Tribes Ascend, as well as making Rusty Hearts my choice brawler.
I was wondering. Do you plan to come back to this when the 6th character is released? Sorta like a “MMOGRINDER UPDATE” for games you like or currently playing. I am not saying to do this for every single update/patch, but maybe for major releases like Character/Class or a new “Season.”
I like to play MMO games that are free to play because right now I don’t have the money to spend at any of the cash shops. My question is in Elsword why is there a stamina meter?
The stamina meter is a way to limit players from spending all their time on a game. It’s most often implemented on Korean or chinese MMOs. In the case of Elsword, DFO and Rusty Hearts, they locked you out of dungeons, while some games, like Rappelz, render your experience gain or character stats worthless if you deplete the stamina meter. Some games let you purchase items to replenish the stamina meter. Elsword does not.
From what I’ve seen the last 2 weeks when I picked up the game again, is that during weekends, the stamina meter is infinite(It could be that the spring event was still lingering around though, so if someone else could confirm that, that’d be great)
Since I was never able to play on weekends before the review went up, I never noticed it until now, but yes. You don’t lose Stamina on Weekends. That wasn’t an event only occurrence. However, the last even did significantly slow the loss of stamina in the game, but that’s gone now.
Btw, the only reason I dislike you making references to WoW is that I have never played WoW and you have not reviewed it.
The other references you make are to games you have already reviewed.
I just find it annoying when people try to explain something to me by comparing it to something else I don’t understand.
The game definitely looks interesting, but the graphics really turn me off. I can’t say I like the lok of any of the characters, and to a large extent, it seems to be using the Worms/World of Warcraft mentality that if you make the game look cartoony, you can get away with less fidelity.
That, and I’ve already burned out on this style of gameplay with Dragonica. It was just as cutesy, just as action-packed and, from the looks of it, just as crushingly repetitive.
While the website and such all claim the game to be Region Locked, it doesn’t seem that the game actually checks this. That is to say, I’ve been playing the game for months and still do so now, I’m from the Netherlands, and I have no issues whatsoever with booting and playing the game.
How did you pull it off? Everyone I know overseas wasn’t able to get past the “this game isn’t available in your country” screen.
Honestly, nothing special. When does this screen pop up?
I just tried to register another account, and download the game again. When registering, while it is written that you can only register from the US or Canada, it registers my account without problems. Also, I can just download the client installer, which pulls in the setup file without problems, and then I’m able to install and run the game. At no point does it stop me with a message saying that the game isnt available in my country.
I looked into what other version there are, and aside from the German version, there’s also French and Italian ones. Perhaps it’s checking for these countries in specific?
@Megiddo I’m from England and when I go on the website and hit “Register” it gives me a page saying that I cannot do it from the country I am in.
So it might be excluding countries specifically after all, then, as I have several friends also from the Netherlands being able to register accounts as well. I wonder if any other countries have this weird exclusion of the region lock.
It makes me wonder if they have region checks build into the actual software as well, or just in the registration process itself.
bro just download the program private tunnel. :I a lot of people from the Philippines were playing els NA just because of it :I
I’ve been trying all night but the episode won’t play for me, even on Blip directly. An Army commercial will always play at full blast+, but no show. Do you have it up on Youtube somewhere?
me too
It’s weird because I’ve watched Linkara and Marzgurl’s stuff on the Blip player in the same time frame, but everyone else seems to be able to see this just fine.
It should be fixed now
Yay, it’s working now! :)
Hmm, it’s kind of a “reflect upon yourself” moment when you watch this video and just think about how it compares to your favorite one out of those 3. Although there’s a lot more like Dragon Nest also.
Rusty Hearts is the only one that stuck with me out of all them though. Still play it casually every once in a while, and could probably listen to the entire sound track at any given time it has so many great tracks.
Until you actually said “El sword” my dyslexia had me thinking it was called Els world.” Don’t ask me where that second L came from.
“You choose a name, but the game constantly refers to your characters by their actual names.” ::gasp!:: you mean like….Maple Story?
Raven…Haha, they made “emo goth” a playable class.
Stamina bar? That’s the sort of crap I would expect from a Facebook game.
Lol. How can you turn an avatar (An incarnation, embodiment, or manifestation of a person or idea) into an avatar? :p
Actually, having picked up this game myself thanks to this review (thanks, ChaosD1), I find the stamina bar isn’t that annoying at all. If anything, it works well as a measure of “we want you to play our game, but we don’t want you to sacrifice your life for this game.” This is a stand that I think more MMO developers and distributors should take. It shows they really care about the players on a level above parental chiding (I love Earthbound, but /those/ calls from dad annoyed me) or money-siphoning.
Also, the stamina bar doesn’t really drop that fast. Unlike FB games, where you can burn through a bar in less than 10 minutes (granted, it recharges faster, but still), Elsword’s will still take you several hours to deplete. So you can pick it up after lunch for instance, and by the time you’re done for the day, it’s supper time.
Great review as always, downloading it now. Can’t wait for episode 20, can’t believe we are already at episode 20.
Rena is the best looking character in the game other than Eve just for this reason – the Nasod Battle Suit ice burner costume set.
Great review. Personally, the knockdown system they have turned me off of the game, but it was still very enjoyable. So, I have been wondering, you tend to make it sound like your pc is in bad shape, would you accept donations of computer parts to help upgrade it? I have my old 9800 GTX+ vid card, and 700W powersupply from when I upgraded mine I could send you.
I think my PC issue stems more from the fact it’s a dead end motherboard. I can’t upgrade my processor much further than it currently is. I’ve looked into it, too and even if I did manage to get a better processor, they don’t seem to make them anymore. My processor is the entire reason I can’t run Vindictus.
I’m not sure if a new vidcard would help, but a better power supply is always nice. I’ll let you know if I can make use of them.
Exactly which song was that at the credits? I want it.
It doesn’t have an official name, as far as I can tell, but many people uploaded it as “Banthus’s Theme”.
The video I’m about to link also contains a link to all the songs in Elsword, but he did that thing I hate where he gave “names” to the songs instead of listing where they’re from. He lists the song in question as “Banthus Attacks!”
There is actually a reason for the region block. Having foreigners in a dungeon match or pvp can really lag the game and make it just unplayable.
Other than that, great review.
Oh wow, turns out I’m playing the same game he was going to review. Now that’s a coincidence.
Anyway, about europe Elsword:
It’s entirely german. Including the voice work. So if you want to play Elsword in Europe, that’s going to be your only stop. here’s the site:
de.elsword.org
In europe, it’s published by gameforge. Gameforge has an odd system when it comes to signing up. First off, you sign up for an account at gameforge. Afterwards, you subscribe to a game.
TBH, I don’t remember too much of how I got in the game, just that I got it. I know my german well enough to be able to translate what’s in the game. If you need any help in that game, hit me up on these IGNs:
Justalyne, Merdon, Acele, Scoth. Of course, like ChaosD1 said, this game is easy enough to get into, and with his explanation, it shouldn’t be too hard to play the game.
Note that some quests ask you to speak to certain people. These tend to have the words “sprich mit” in their requirements to complete it. There’s also a quest chain that explains how to upgrade, socket and give an attribute to your weapon.
I don’t know if there are any english speaking communities within this game, but you might want to find some if you don’t know/want to use german all the time.
Sorry if I kind of hijacked, but I just wanted to get that word out. If anyone else wants to help in the european version, or needs help, just leave it in the comments.
Anyway this is a good review. I can’t say much about the community myself, since most people are quiet and/or keep to themself, the latter group to which I belong, if that sentence makes sense.
Damn, I forgot some things. Don’t expect me to know everything there is about the game, just know that I can translate parts of the game and know some stuff up till lvl 24 or 25. I also don’t know much about PvP because of that.
I tried doing it, and got stomped on pretty hard by people who have been playing for a lot longer.
This game looks like it could be fun. Anything that’s action-based quickly grabs my attention over point-and-click MMOs. I think I’ll give it a try.
I ended up looking up to see if there actually is any European servers, but alas as usual the europeans don’t get any servers at all for the decent beat’em up MMOs. We don’t even get DFO though we got Rusty Hearts finally but it ain’t my thnig. It’s a shame this game looks rather decent but for some reason they ignore the european community though I don’t understand why as we get more the JRPGs/Japanese games before america as they sell better here. Sense made…. None.
But Rusty Hearts was never region locked.
Check out Dragonica. It’s a pretty decent beat-em-up. I was actually introduced to the EU version of the game before the US version (Dragon Saga).
Wow, that song at the end WAS actually pretty awesome. And you only hear it once? Shame.
Don’t worry Jon, I’d have picked Rena too. For probably the same reason/s you did. That and she looks to be the only character who looks like an adult. Again, same reasons. :P
Great review as always, and looking forward to the WoW clone for next week. Or am I reading too much into the stinger at the end?
I picked Rena too, but not for those reasons. I like using more speed-oriented physical characters in RPG-style games, not big sword-using powerhouses like the eponymous character. I still deploy the arrow specials on bosses and higher-powered mooks, but my go-to moves are the ground attack combos and Ascent Kick. As a result, I ended up going Combat Ranger when it came time for my class change.
“Next time is episode 20….and that’s all I’m telling you.” And you know what Jon, I’m just dandy with that, keep me guessing :) Awesome review. I might actually pick this one up. I tried Air Rivals, but it didn’t seem as engaging as other flight sim/arcade flight games that I’ve played. I might get back into it later though. Still, Elsword seems much more interesting and I really love the atmosphere and characters. Thanks for the info on this game :)
“I tried Air Rivals…”
I’m pity you so so much.
Yeah, it srsly needs to be revamped. Nothing really made it interesting :(
If you watch the last bit at the end, he seems to mildly imply the next game may bear a passing resemblance to WoW.
*watches episode 20*
*LOLs*
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